CHAPTER XXXVII
MODERN BEE-KEEPING
WE have already seen that straw hives were formerly used to keep bees in. They had many disadvantages, and perhaps the greatest was that sections could not be put on to collect the extra honey. The only way in which it could be obtained was to kill the bees and to take the honey they had stored for themselves. The bees were generally suffocated by the fumes of burning sulphur, and so you will see that besides being inconvenient this method of bee-keeping was also very cruel. The hives with the greatest number of bees were the healthiest, and they were selected for treatment in this manner, for they had more honey stored away than the weaker ones. In this way all the best bees were killed off, and those that we have at the present time are descended from poor ancestors. It will be many years before they have been brought back to their former state of excellence.
After the bees had been suffocated, the old bee-keepers took out the combs. These were not built in frames as are those of the present day, but were just made inside the skep in any way the bees liked. The honey was then extracted from them, but it was of very poor quality, for pieces of broken comb, pollen, and even dead grubs, or parts of the bees themselves, were mixed up with it. How different this is from the beautifully clear honey obtained by the modern methods.
PLATE XXXII
From a photograph by] [E. Hawks
Sealing over the Honey Cells
After the cells have been filled with honey the bees leave them uncovered for a little time, so that the water in the honey may evaporate. The honey then ripens, and the chemist bees place a tiny drop of formic acid in each cell. When all is ready, the cells are sealed over, and in Plate XXXII. we may see the bees at work doing this. You will be interested to know that the English bees do not quite fill the cells, and so the colour of the honey does not show. Foreign bees, however, fill the cells quite to the brim, which gives the comb a dark and dirty appearance.
Nowadays the straw skeps are very seldom seen, for their place is taken by the wooden hives we have already considered. The frames containing the combs are all of the same size, so that they may be transferred from one hive to another. For instance, should a certain hive have collected a large quantity of honey for winter use, and another hive not have sufficient, the bee-keeper may take one or two frames of this honeycomb from the rich hive and put it into the poor one, and in this way both lots of bees will live throughout the winter. In many other ways the frame hives are useful, besides being much more healthy. The bees need not be killed in order to get the honey, as was necessary with the skeps, for a puff or two of smoke is all that is required, and while they are frightened we may remove the sections.
You will understand that the sooner the queen sees pollen coming into the hive in the early spring, the sooner will she commence laying eggs. The sooner the eggs are laid, the more bees will there be ready for the summer flowers. So the bee-keeper sprinkles pea-flour in a box of shavings near the hive in the early days of spring. The bees soon find the flour, and, thinking it is pollen, they commence to carry it into the hive. When the queen sees it coming in she is deceived, and thinks summer is at hand; so she commences to lay eggs. This gives the hive a start, so that when spring really comes, there are large numbers of bees ready to gather honey from the early flowers.
We have already mentioned that a great quantity of honey has to be consumed before wax can be made, and this is a serious loss to the bee-keeper, for it not only reduces the stores, but also wastes valuable time as well. So the bees are now provided with a thin sheet of wax, a piece of which hangs downward in each frame. On it is stamped the exact design of the cells, so that not only is material provided for the bees, but the architects are saved the trouble of having to map out where each cell shall be. A piece of this “foundation,” as it is called, is shown in Plate XXXIII. The bees readily take to it, and as soon as the work of building is to commence they knead the wax and draw it out from the foundation, until it is a complete cell. In this way a great deal of time is saved.
PLATE XXXIII
From a photograph by] [E. Hawks
Foundation, showing the Pattern for Cells